Religion, Supernaturalism, the Paranormal and Pseudoscience: An Anthropological Critique

517 Pages·2019·1.844 MB·English

by  Homayun Sidky

Religion, Supernaturalism, the Paranormal,
and Pseudoscience

Religion, Supernaturalism, the
Paranormal, and Pseudoscience
An Anthropological Critique
H. Sidky
Anthem Press
An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company
www.anthempress.com
This edition first published in UK and USA 2020
by ANTHEM PRESS
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Copyright © H. Sidky 2020
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above,
no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means
(electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise),
without the prior written permission of both the copyright
owner and the above publisher of this book.
British Library Cataloguing- in- Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN- 13: 978- 1- 78527- 162- 5 (Hbk)
ISBN- 10: 1- 78527- 162- 8 (Hbk)
This title is also available as an e- book.
For Kathryn Lea. Thank you for being my advocatus
diaboli in Venice, Italy and helping me shape many
of the ideas expressed here.
vi
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments xv
Introduction 1
Chapter One The Problem with Religion: Preliminary Issues 5
Why Are Believers Incensed by Criticism? 10
Religion as a Mind Virus 12
Immunizing the Mind Virus 18
Faith Is Superstition 19
Faith Promotes Unreason 20
Why Believers Are Dangerous 21
Religion as an Evolutionary By- Product 24
The Flaws in the Scholarly Studies of Religion 25
Chapter Two The Unreal Real: The Supernatural, Religion,
and the Paranormal 39
What Is the Supernatural? 39
What Is Religion? 46
What Is the Paranormal? 49
The Paranormal and Pseudoscience 51
Chapter Three Can Science Say Anything About Religion and the
Supernatural? 57
Science and Religion: Non- Overlapping Magisteria? 58
Methodological Naturalism and Its Religionist Critics 61
A Theistic Science Instead of an Empirical Science? 67
What Are the Unassailable Foundations of a
Theist Science? 70
The Actual Meaning of Naturalism in Science 73
Unfalsifiable Claims and the Scientific Criterion of
Replicability: The Story of N- Rays 75
Provisional Methodological Naturalism: How Science
Really Works 77
How Science Assesses Non-Falsifi able Claims 80
Assessing Claims to Knowledge: Zeus, Circe, Santa Claus,
God, Unicorns, and the Problem of Evil 80
viii
viii RELIGION, SUPERNATURALISM, THE PARANORMAL, & PSEUDOSCIENCE
Why the Absence of Evidence Is Evidence of Absence 86
Some Further Religionist Anti- Science Assertions 86
Scientism: What Does It Really Mean? 87
Science Caused the Holocaust 87
Hitler Was a Darwinian 88
Science Is a Worldview or a Religion 89
Subjecting the Entire Range of Religionist and
Creationist Assumptions to Critical Scrutiny 91
Chapter Four Ghostly Rappings, the Science of the Soul, and the
Religious Nature of the Paranormal 93
Spiritualism and the Quest for the Soul 94
Parapsychology and the Religious Nature of Psi
Phenomena 98
On the Persistence and Weirdness of Ghost Beliefs and
Otherworldly Powers 102
Why Believers Won’t Quit: The Legacy of the
Nineteenth- Century Search for Ghosts and the Soul 103
How Paranormal Beliefs Are Immunized: Explaining
Away Disconfirmations 104
The Cumulative Weirdness of Psi Phenomena 105
Why Don’t Paranormalists Accomplish Great Things? 108
Chapter Five Ghostly Encounters in the Field: Anthropology of the
Paranormal or Paranormal Anthropology? 111
Anthropology and Paranormal Phenomena 112
Paranormal Anthropology: Ghostly Encounters
in the Field 115
Extraordinary Anthropology and
Paranthropology: Epistemological Quandaries 116
From Paranormal Anthropology to Theistic Anthropology 119
What Do Paranormal Experiences in the Field Signify? 120
Chapter Six Why We Think the World Is Haunted 121
How Our Cognitive Biases Predispose Us to Paranormal
Ideation 122
Why We Think about Ghosts and Other Uncanny
Entities: Intentional Agents and the Theory of Mind 124
Why Spirits, Ghosts, and Gods Have Human- Like Minds 125
Why the World Is Mind- Like, Souls Persist after Death,
Animism, and Anthropomorphism 129
Why Humans Believe in the Soul and an Afterlife 131
Responses to Naturalistic Cognitive Explanations of
Religion by Theistic Philosophers 135
CONTENTS ix
Is There a Sensus Divinitatus or God- Module in the
Human Brain? 143
Implications: Supernaturalism Debunked 145
Chapter Seven Cognitive Biases and Why People Think Eerie Thoughts 147
Memory, Cognition, and Supernatural and Paranormal
Ideation 147
What the Roswell UFO Crash Tells Us about Paranormal
Ideation 149
Memory Distortions and Beliefs in Paranormal 152
Witnessing the Resurrection of the Dead during
Anthropological Fieldwork: What Does It Mean? 154
Additional Distorting Effects on Memory and Perception 156
Misunderstanding Probabilistic Events and Paranormal
Beliefs 159
Synchronicity and the Bible Code 160
What the Shroud of Turin Tells Us about Paranormal
Believers 161
The Shroud as a Paranormal Object 162
Holy Things, the Christian Cult of Saints, and Relics
of the Christ 162
How the Shroud Became a Magical Object of Veneration 164
How Shroud Believers Have Misrepresented the Evidence 164
What Historical Records and Iconography Reveal 167
Scientific Evidence, Pseudoscience, Pious Frauds, and
the Shroud 169
Radiocarbon Dates: Disgracing What
Cannot Be Disproved 170
Chapter Eight Miracles as Evidence of God’s Actions in the World 173
The Role of Miracles in Religion 173
David Hume on the Nature of Testimonial Evidence and
the Psychology of Miracle Claims 175
Pious Frauds, Miracles, and Why Extraordinary Claims
Always Require Extraordinary Evidence 179
Evaluating Extraordinary Claims 184
What Do Miracles Actually Signify? 187
Are Miracles Logically Possible? 188
The Theist Case for Miracles and Efforts to Refute David
Hume 190
Chapter Nine When God Talks to People: Are Religious Experience
Evidence of God? 201
Visionary Experiences and the Rise of Religious Movements 202
x
x RELIGION, SUPERNATURALISM, THE PARANORMAL, & PSEUDOSCIENCE
Do Religious Experiences Support the Existence of the
God of Theism? 204
Do Religious Experiences and Public Perceptions Have
Epistemic Parity?: Swinburne’s Theological Proof 205
What Do the Experiences of God Really Signify? 209
Are Religious Experiences Cosmically Significant
Supernatural Events? 212
What Do Altered States of Consciousness and Anomalous
Experiences Really Signify? 214
Are Religious Experiences Veridical or Paranormal
Fantasies? 216
Religious Experience and Brain- Based Hallucinations 218
Does God Speak to People? Julian Jaynes’s Eccentric
Theory of the Bicameral Mind 223
Out- of- Body and Near- Death Experiences 224
Cognitive Mechanisms of Hallucinatory Phenomena 227
Apparitions: Perceiving Figures 230
Collective Hallucinations and Group Delusions 232
Marian Apparitions: What Do They Signify? 233
Chapter Ten Books Authored by God? Sacred Texts as Evidence of the
Supernatural 239
Proposed Evidence of the Divine Origins of
Sacred Texts 239
What Would Books Written by God Really Look Like? 241
The Old Testament: God’s Message to Humankind 1.0 244
The New Testament: God’s Message to Humankind 2.0 250
Chapter Eleven God’s Fingerprints in the Natural World: Intelligent Design,
Irreducible Complexity, and Cosmic Fine- Tuning 259
The Cognitive Foundations of Arguments from Design 260
The Nature of Design Argument 262
William Paley, Natural Theology, and the Argument from
Design 264
Paley Updated: Swinburne’s Case 271
What Would a Designed Universe Really Look Like? 272
Taking Reverend Paley to the Microbiology
Laboratory: God’s Handiwork in Molecular Structures 273
What Is Irreducible Complexity and Does It Prove
“God the Designer” 276
Intelligent Design and the Argument from Ignorance 278
The Case for Irreducible Complexity and Its Flaws 278
Looking for God’s Handiwork in the Cosmos: Taking
Reverend Paley to Outer Space 282